Pinned
So… hearing Caleb’s charming little Zemnian kitty fairytale, I couldn’t help wanting to translate it back to its “original” Zemnian.
Both the transcript and the translation (minus the stream’s interjections) are under the cut. If you have any suggestions on how to improve it (German is my native language, but there are bound to be some mistakes and rough spots in there!), feel free to poke away!
Story and translation under the cut:
As someone who works in therapy for a living, I can confirm this is 100% accurate
For Traitor: neck retraction exercise. While lying in bed with your head flat against the mattress, give yourself the biggest double chin you can. Repeat 10 times.
For Jackass: stop hiking your shoulders up to your ears. This is pretty much a stress thing, it’s human instinct to protect our neck when we’re under stress so that predators can’t get at it. Easiest way to do that is be elevating the shoulders, so. Periodically take not of where your shoulders are at.
Absolute Fuckwaffle: stretch out your chest. The rhomboids on the back work to keep our shoulder blades back, so when we’re hunched forward they are constantly straining to do their job. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as telling you to stand up straight, since our pectorals get chronically tight and prevent us from doing so. Step one: pectoral stretches. Hold for at least 20 seconds.
Asshole: Superman exercises. Like the rhomboids, the ESGs are straining against the slump. Stretching the chest will help them, too, but then you e got to strengthen your back. Do 20 of those per day.
when I tell u I had to scroll a week back in my twitter likes to find this video bc I genuinely couldn’t sleep until I did
Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free
I really wish more ADHD mental health care told you WHY things like this matter to our quality of life.
The Hyperactivity in Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is NOT about being physically hyperactive, it's about having a "hyperactive central nervous system" because it's a form of inheritable dysautonomia. The problem with disautonomia, especially the ADHD kind, is that it makes boredom flag to your nervous system as a THREAT, triggering hyperactive and maladaptive central nervous system processes like fight or flight.
But dysautonomia kills you that way. Literally, part of the reason our average life spand increase on stimulents is that it helps manage risk-taking impulsivity that can get us killed by accident, but the other part is that stimulents can regulate a hyperactive CNS such that it is functionally (while impacted by the stimulent) NOT dysregulated anymore. And PHYSIOLOGICALLY that is essential because the physical outcomes of dysautonomia can reduce your life span by YEARS if not decades through self-perpetuating hypervigelence, endocrine disruption, and adrenal fatigue.
So when the ADHD brain goes stimulation-seeking and a doctor tells you to practice mindfulness, it feels like being told "hey go stand in a functioning boiler until you can stop thinking" rather than WHAT IT IS which is the process of re-teaching your body what is and isn't safe.
Standing outside making mindful, non-interpretive/moralized observation of the world helps your brain and body re-acclimate to the idea that absence of that frantic "busy" feeling isn't a threat or a risk to your safety, and gradually reduces the level of distress that just hanging out somewhere triggers for you.
Learning WHY this stuff was being suggested and understanding what it was actually supposed to do went a long way towards changing my relationship with my ADHD. I am FAR more functional now, far less prone to shame spirals and rejection sensitivity, hell, I can **sit physically still for near on an hour at a time** now without feeling like I'm going to crawl out of my skin.
So yeah. Go outside. Let the world narrow around you and take deep breaths until it stops feeling claustrophobic or like you need to climb walls. Learn how to let little sensations become big ones like the way the heat of the sun on your skin starts as a gentle warming and be omes a unique collection of sensory moments depending on how it lands on you. Listen for sounds under sounds and let them fade in and out as you move your focus from one sound to the next. Enjoy. Move on. Rinse and repeat.
When you no longer feel like the world is actively killing you, it's a lot easier to navigate it.
S++ tier addition to the post, thank you tumblr user butts bouncing on the beltway
Link to original post with all the links
Some very helpful tools, ideas, and ways keep going or get involved
I will add the resource Big Beautiful Boycott as a way of checking businesses to avoid that is not an app
Lmao 😂
“Surely the kitten doesn’t really say ‘meep.’”
“…”
“I stand corrected.”
It’s so crazy that suicide prevention is just people going awwww don’t!! Awwww come on noooooooooo stopppppp
One of the best ones I saw was a thing noting that every single one of the few survivors of suicide jumps off of the Golden Gate Bridge realized, on the way down, that the problems they were killing themselves over actually were fixable or could be worked through...except for the now - extremely unfixable - problem of gravity.
Went to the Holocaust Museum in DC once. There was a video interview of an Auschwitz survivor who said he and some other prisoners stayed up all night with a man who wanted to kill himself. The man didn’t kill himself and survived to liberation.
In the video the survivor said “Never seek a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And they’re all temporary problems.”
Hearing that from a guy who survived the Holocaust rewired my brain a little bit.
I think something a lot of people don't understand is that depression is not suicidality, and suicidality is not depression. People can, and are, depressed without being suicidal, and sometimes suicidality peaks as people are emerging from depression. Suicidality is a wave, and the trick is to allow that wave to crest and subside WITHOUT acting on it. Whatever it takes to ride it out. For some people that's distraction, like watching television. For others it's calling a friend -- not to talk about the suicidality, but just to talk. For others it could be as simple as going to sit in a coffee shop or library, because the presence of other people is a huge diminisher of suicide risk. That's what suicide safety planning is about. It's like having any other type of emergency plan, like a plan for fire or evacuation. It's making a plan when you are in the frame of mind to do so, so that you can just DO the plan without having to think about it when the occasion arises. When you're in the midst of suicidal ideation, or even intent, you're not in a problem-solving mood. So knowing past!you, with the help of a therapist hopefully, came up with the plan and all you have to do is follow up until the wave crests and subsides, is what allows you to see another day.
ETA: Here's a link to a safety plan. https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/988-safety-plan.pdf
Ploop ploop ploop
bless you
*through gritted teeth* when i do something wrong and am politely asked to change my behavior its just a simple request to fix a problem and not an indictment of my character. when i do something wrong and am politely asked to change my behavior its just a simple request to fix a problem and not an indictment of my worth as a human being
*gripping the sink and staring into the mirror* i can regulate my emotions and move on from well-intentioned polite criticism by resolving to change my behavior in the future without dwelling on the shame and guilt. i can regulate my emotions in a healthy way and move on and not get stuck scrolling tumblr for an hour and a half to just blast my brain w stimulation to avoid my negative feelings. oh wait its too late for that last one
the wording on this Jack russell vid beamed a permanent mark onto my brain
absolutely fucking obsessed with this picture of him as a puppy. that's animal
*dry food crunches* Ridiculously small kitten: “Myam myam myam. Njam njam njam njam njam njam njam! Myam myam myam nyam nyam myam. Mmmam. Mrrrrram. Meep!”
